Damn tire tubes!

It was pretty slow at work today, but I didn't mind. It was kinda nice to get a bit of a break. But then near the end of the day, I got a flat tire right when I had a bunch of stuff to do. That pissed me off, but I had a spare tube on me so I thought it would be a simple matter of swapping out the old tube for the new one. As I was installing the new tube, I noticed a bit of tube getting pinched as I got the last of the tire on the rim. Sure enough, when I tried to pump up my tire, the air just when straight back out again. Pinch flat. Now I was really mad. Which didn't help when I went to MEC afterwards because I was so angry, I screwed up again and gave myself another pinch flat with the third tube. I finally got a tube installed properly when I took the time to be real careful that the tube wouldn't get pinched. I kinda pumped it up real hard, I hope it doesn't explode. Mmmm, maybe I should let some air out just in case....

March 26, 2005

Worst Logo Evar

Sin City

I was just checking out the web site for the movie Sin City. Holy shit, this could be a really cool movie! It's directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller [who also wrote the comic book it's based on]. And it stars a whole whack of familiar faces - Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke, Brittany Murphy, Jessica Alba etc. Here's the IMDB entry with the whole list. There's a Slashdot article about how it was made too. [Funny that they mention that it's "the first movie ever to use a digital format supporting full-bandwidth RGB" and yet almost all of the movie is in black & white. I'm sure that it'll look good though.] Opens April 1. [I hope that this doesn't turn out to be one big April Fool's joke, that would suck] A couple of trailers can be found here. It looks like a combination of Max Payne and Kill Bill.

March 23, 2005

I hate this world

Wasn't too busy at work this morning, I actually got to sit down and surf the net using my Blackberry, which promptly crashed when loading a largish page. The Java-based BB's seem a lot less stable than the old C++ based units. Anyway, this afternoon got a little busier, especially near the end of the day when I was doing all my bank deposits. This one client from the east end of town called me for a bank run while I still had about 5 deposits left to do. I wasn't sure if I could make it, but somehow, after doing all the deposits, I had enough time left to run down there, pick it up and get to the bank before it closed. But, as I was riding to the bank, my front end started getting all bouncy. I thought at first it might just be my shocks getting accidently set to "soft", which makes them all mooshy like that. But no, it was a fucking flat tire. Argh, just when I was really busy. I did manage to get to the bank before my tire went completely flat. While I was in the bank, I got a call for a rush as well. And the bank took forever to make up these bank drafts. By the time I got out of the bank, fixed my flat tire and picked up all my calls, the day was pretty well toast. Now I have all these left-overs for tomorrow, plus I'm supposed to pick up doughnuts "first thing" tomorrow, as Friday is a holiday. Eek, I hate that. The worst part was when I was trying to get the piece of glass out of my tire before throwing in the new tube and I couldn't get it out, it was stuck in there good. And it was snowing like crazy, so my tire was all cold and wet, it was pure hell I tell you.

MP3Tag

After ripping my Faith No More CD "album of the year", I noticed the ID3 tags were left empty. Found this program [MP3TAG] that accesses freedb to automatically fill in the correct info. Seems to work well, and it's free.

FNM - The Slender Thread

They just played the 1965 movie The Slender Thread on Scream starring Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft. It also starred Telly Savalas and Ed Asner, aka Kojack and Lou Grant. It was about a lady [Anne Bancroft] who swallowed a bunch of pills to try and commit suicide, who then calls a "crisis center" hotline and ends up talking to a student [Sidney Poitier] working there. He tries to keep her on the line so they can trace the call, and in 1965 it can take a very long time to trace a call! They show some cool arial shots of Seattle at the begining. [I didn't know the Space Needle was that old!] And the story was pretty cool as they show what led her to this predicament, Ann Bancroft is a little creepy but sympathetic. Poitier's character seems mostly good, although at times you wonder if he even gives a shit if she dies.

Anyway, as I was watching the movie, at one point Inge [Anne Bancroft] says:
"I even tried to get arrested today
But everyone looked the other way"
Ha, right away I recognized that line from a Faith No More song. [Track 5 "Helpless" from the CD "album of the year"] There's also the lines:
"The water's clear
I see that it's full of dimes
For every wish, I wonder why
Why all I want is something beautiful
A place to rest"
Which seems to relate to this movie as well because Inge talks of sitting by a pool full of coins [dimes?] and wondering how many people who made wishes there are dead. So I guess this song was inspired by this movie, which I never knew and thought it was cool and shit. :)

Faith No More - Helpless

The air is warm
I hear the wind and the trees
I know I'm there, but I'll never be
The wind is soft tonight, the tide is low
And I know the way
(I never felt better now)

Sometimes life, it moves too slow
Slows to a crawl, and then the poetry is lost
And without speed, hope becomes certainty
And for once I'm certain
(I never felt better now)

A garden is it's own perfect world
Where everything has a place
Every leaf, every stone, every speck of dirt
But where's my place?
I even tried to get arrested today
But everyone looked the other way
I count the hours, and I count the days
But for once I'm certain

March 16, 2005

The Bourne Supremacy

Watched The Bourne Supremacy just now, good flick. A little too much of the shakey-cam if you ask me. I mean, it makes sense during action sequences, but when it's just two people talking on screen, there's really no reason to make it look like they're experiencing a 6.9 earthquake at the time. Stupid fad, I hope it dies out soon, giving me a fucking headache. Good car chase in there, I liked how Bourne's car would get spun right around and he would pull out of it. The story kinda floundered a bit near the end, it just didn't really build up to much of a climax. But overall a fun movie, succeeds at what it sets out to do - pure, mindless entertainment. But not fucking stupid, like say, I Robot.

March 14, 2005

Stendhal Syndrome

Also cought Dario Argento's The Stendhal Syndrome last week on Scream. I didn't care for it too much, although some parts of it were fairly interesting, like when she walks into the paintings. You could see where it was going very early in the film so there was no element of suspense to keep you interested. Asia Argento is a detective? Sorry, that just never worked for me, she was just too young in this film.

*** spoilers ***

After the film was over, Mistress Olga, the Scream host for the movie, mentions that Anna was the victim and the killer/rapist, the cop and the criminal, the man [when she cut her hair short] and the woman [when she wears the blond wig], basically she had some weird duality thing going. And since she is the central character of the movie, is she the hero, or the villain? It would be interesting to re-watch the movie to catch all the little details like that, that I probably missed on my first viewing. Wish the picture quality was a bit better, the Scream showing was pretty rough. Maybe it's better on DVD?

I hated I Robot

I watched I, Robot the other day. Ugh, what a horrible movie! I was hoping it would have at least leave some of Asimov's story intact, but it was basically just a 'vehicle' for Will Smith. The black hat he wears through the first half of the movie looked ridiculous and was very distracting. And what the hell was all that shit about his running shoes? Will Smith liked his new sneakers so much he had to squeeze them into his new movie somehow? And he was supposed to be a detective? He never acted at all like a detective, it's like we were supposed to just accept that he was a detective because they said so. Never bought it for a second. At one point the main chick asks if he was trying to be funny, and I felt that way about him throughout the movie. He was trying to be funny, but never was. And the message[s] this movie was trying to send. WTF? Old is good, new is bad. Emotion is good, logic is bad. I forgot what else they were saying, but it sucked man. I think Asimov's robot stories are about unexpected consequences of progress and how they can't be 'contained' by the three laws. I never thought he was arguing against progress as such, unlike this movie which takes a very regressive, anti-tech POV. Which made me hate Will Smith's character, I was really hoping the robots would just kill him. Hated this movie from begining to end. Some of the effects were pretty sweet, too bad they're wasted on such a vacuous, unentertaining movie.

March 06, 2005

Sunday Bogus Sunday

Finished Far Cry today, finally. Good game, although the save game system was a pain at times and it was quite difficult at certain points. [like the begining of the Dam level, I hated that part!]

I also tried to install my new crank today. Got as far as getting my old crank off. But when I tried to take the bottom bracket off, it wouldn't budge. Seized up tight. So I went to Sears and bought this massive 1¼" wrench, figuring it would give me plenty of leverage to twist the thing open. Well, I secured the BB tool with a skewer to guard against slippage and went at her with the big wrench. It finally turned and I thought "Yeah, it broke free!" Upon closer inspection, though, it hadn't come free at all, but in fact had sheared off half the edge of the cup where the tool grips on! What a bummer. First I just wanted the pedals off, but I couldn't because they were seized to the crank. Now this. I'll pop in to the bike shop tomorrow and see what they think. I know they can push out the wrecked cup from the other side if they can get the good cup off, they did it for me a long time ago. The question is, can they get that other cup off without wrecking it the way I wrecked this one? I'm so bummed, I hope there is a way to get this done, I really like this frame.

March 03, 2005

175mm, you daft bastard

My pedals have been slowly deteriorating for the last little while, but they have taken a turn for the worse as of late. I actually tried to replace them recently but I could not get them off the cranks. This week, the right pedal has been disintegrating day by day, making loud crunchy sounds when I pedal and it's totally loose, it almost feels like the body is going to slide off the axle. Went to the bike shop, Singletrack, and asked them if they could get the pedals off. After a valiant try, it was a no-go, the pedal just spun around without coming out at all. I guess it's so seized up, it's just stripping the threads when you try to loosen it. That means the only solution is to get a new crankset. [I already have new pedals from when I tried to replace them last time] After checking out a few cranksets, I decided on the Shimano LX. But they wanted $160, which seemed a little steep to me. Looking online, I saw that I could get the set for $120, $40 cheaper! I also found the set for $135 at the Bike Shop. When you factor in shipping charges [$10], the Bike Shop's price is only $5 more than online and I wouldn't have to wait for them to ship. So I decided to get it there.

I went in today after work and asked the guy for the Shimano LX crankset, 175mm. He even repeated it back to me "175mm", before disappearing into the basement for about twenty minutes. He came back with a crankset, no box, no instructions, no fixing bolts, just two pieces zip-tied together. I thought this was a little suspicious, but whatever, they could give them to me in a brown paper bag for all I care as long as they work. Well, I get home and take a closer look at what I bought. The first thing I noticed was that he gave me the wrong size. Right there in plain view, stamped on the metal "170mm". Fuck! Worse, I notice wear on the rings, the paint is all scraped away and you can see rings where pedals used to be installed. The motherfucker sold me not only the wrong sized item, but a used item! Holy shit, was I pissed off! They were still open, so I raced down there to get a replacement or my money back. I tried to be nice because I knew the guy who sold me this is probably gone home and I would be dealing with totally different people. But I'm sure they knew I was pretty goddamned pissed off. After explaining my predicament, he turns around and grabs the correct, boxed part off the shelf not more than two feet behind him. Eek, that first bastard wasted twenty minutes of my time to go get a wrong, used part from the basement, when the correct, new part was sitting right behind him the whole time? WTF?

Anyway, I got the right part [finally!] and I'm going to install it this weekend. I just hope my bottom bracket set isn't seized like my pedals, that would suck. Oh, and my new crankset is splined instead of tapered, which is cool because I've always had problems with those damn tapered axles getting wrecked. If your tighten your cranks too tight on a tapered axle, your cranks wobble back and forth, coming loose all the time no matter how hard you crank them on. Then you need to replace the BB and the crankset, usually. Major pain. I've actually had good success with the "coke-can shim" tho. That's when you take a piece of the metal from a Coke can [or any aluminum can, Coke cans are a nice, pretty red tho] and use it as a shim to stop the wobble. Did it about two years ago and it's been solid ever since.